12-7-18 — The following is an excerpt from Dana Walker’s excellent FB page discussing Olympia’s Media Island meltdown:
Andras Jones:Thanks for asking Ken [Burch]. We’ll start with KAOS. I hosted Radio8Ball there for 10 years. During that time my co-host Tammy T regularly engaged in behavior that made me uncomfortable including lots of dramatic late night e-mails from her and very public attacks from her partner Merwyn Haskett.
Merwyn Haskett
I spoke with program director Donna Crg DiBianco about my uncomfortable feelings with Tammy and she encouraged me to give her another chance. After several more chances I finally made the decision to do the show without her. She had her own show on KAOS so she did not lose access to the station but her response was to target me for harassment that included tearing down my flyers, sending (and getting other people to send) threatening e-mails to me, calls to my other places of business encouraging them not to work with me, slanderous graffiti using my name at public places like The Brotherhood Lounge
She also composed a very public blog that KAOS knew about in which she made many claims about me that were untrue and painted her as the innocent victim of an evil man who took away her show.
When I complained to the new station manager Ruth Brownstein about this she said we needed to work it out and that it wasn’t a KAOS issue. Ruth then started to file negative reports about me. One night not long after reporting the harassment program director Jerry Drummond accosted me before I went on air in front of a witness. He shouted obscenities at me and repeated claims that Tammy had been posting on her blog about the show going down the tubes since she left.
John Ford
I filed a report about this and two weeks later my show was canceled and the next day Jerry Drummond filed an untrue report with campus police that I had assaulted him.
Brett Clubbe, Kaos Radio host
Since then Ruth Brownstein, John Ford and others on the KAOS staff have spread rumors and lies about me. Ask Brett Clubbe if you want to know how they work. I should say one more thing. Tammy T admitted to her harassment of me in a letter which I re-printed in my book “Accidental Initiations” but no one at KAOS or Evergreen has been willing to demand that I receive some kind of hearing about being harassed, reporting it, and then being punished for doing so. Meanwhile, Radio8Ball has gone onto great success and KAOS gets to take no part in it, which is very sad for the community of people who loved the show and have no idea what KAOS did to get rid of it.
As for the co-op, there’s nothing wrong with passing a boycott of Israeli goods if you do so in a way that invites and includes community discussion, but when you abuse the process to ram it through in one night without inviting the community or the staff to have a say then you’re playing dirty. And when you play dirty in a way that excludes Jews from a conversation about Israel it is as anti-semitic as it would be to exclude women from a discussion about reproductive rights, or people of color from a conversation about police brutality, or to exclude Muslim people from a conversation about Israel.
If you have to cheat to win then you are not in the right and you make that space unsafe for everyone. I should also point out that the boycott led to removing one item from the shelves so it had zero impact in Israel but a huge impact in Olympia. The Olympia Food Co–op that began in my uncle’s garage in the 70’s is someplace I do not feel safe or welcome and I actually oppose Israel’s military policies, but I also oppose anti-semitic bullies in Olympia and anyone who justifies the Co-op’s actions to exclude community involvement, especially the Jewish community, in that decision is a supporter of anti-semitism no matter how they may try dress it up.
As for what went on at MII, I have no clue and I do not take anyone’s side. I am speaking generally about intersectionality and inclusivity and using my own experience of being targeted by reactionary bullies as an example.
I don’t know who the reactionary bullies are in this situation. It sounds to me like everyone is really triggered and I don’t think triggered people generally make the best decisions, which is why processes that allow people to be heard and to listen are what I think we need, not just at MII.
And finally, just so we’re clear, when you gather a gang of people together to harass a Jewish person it’s going to be terrifying to them in a specific way which is unique to the Jewish experience. If you then punish the terrified Jewish person for reporting the harassment this too is going to have a unique effect on a person who comes from a culture that has experienced anti-semitism and unfair treatment at the hands of authorities who are supposed to protect them.
And if you then manipulate processes designed to protect people to further target, isolate and slander that Jew then you are fully engaging the anti-semitic playbook.
And finally, if the largest community organization in town uses the same dirty tactics to manipulate their own processes to exclude Jews from a conversation about Israel, well, then one might rightly say, as i do, that Olympia is an anti-semitic little town and the only way to prove me wrong is to be willing to have the anti-semitism conversation, which would include addressing the cases I related above with an awareness that anti-semitism is real and the people who want to talk about it aren’t just being dramatic, paranoid, or trying to play a card. We are people with a specific history that includes being murdered while our “allies” on the left watched and did nothing.
As you can see I have a lot of energy for this conversation and despite those who suggest, as many have, that I just walk away, that is something I will never do. You’re welcome.
Death blew east on a savage wind, driving flames over foothills and across a river, spitting glowing embers and scrubbing the earth bare.
It was coming for Don Andrews.
His bulldozer’s windows shattered, flinging glass into his face. The blue-green shards were everywhere: on the floor, inside his helmet, in his skin and eyes. He was alone and blinded. The firestorm shook the ground and roared as loud as a passing train.
I’m not going to survive this, he thought.
In three decades of firefighting, Andrews, 60, had witnessed plenty of close calls. He’d seen blistering heat melt the stickers on his dozer in Mariposa County. More than once, when flames burned over his rig, he’d summoned helicopters or planes to cover him with water or pink retardant.
About this project
After reporting on the Carr Fire in July, reporter Lizzie Johnson, working with Chronicle photographers, graphic artists and digital producers, sought to reconstruct in detail the deadly fire tornado that swept into Redding three days after the blaze ignited. The account in this story is based on exclusive interviews with survivors and family members of those killed, as well as more than a dozen other interviews with witnesses and officials, Cal Fire investigative reports, audio of 911 calls and video footage provided to The Chronicle.
But on this day, July 26, he wasn’t supposed to be this close to the edge. He’d come from his home in Orland in Glenn County for a fairly routine contract assignment at the Carr Fire in Shasta County, hired by the state’s Cal Fire agency to carve a thick ring of dirt around a subdivision of homes. The containment lines were three dozer blades wide and designed to halt the advance of the wildfire, which was still miles away.
What Andrews didn’t know was that the Carr Fire — to that point a dangerous but rather ordinary California inferno — was about to spawn something monstrous: a fire tornado the likes of which the state had never seen.
The vortex of air ripped around a column of rising heat, flames licking its walls. A freak of meteorology, it would annihilate everything in its path, uprooting trees and crumpling electrical towers. For the men and women who spend their summers on the fire lines, the tornado was an ominous glimpse of the extremes our warming climate will bring.
As Andrews’ focus turned from plowing defensible space to warding off potentially fatal burns, several others in the twister’s path — firefighters, bulldozer drivers and residents not yet evacuated from their homes — faced similar peril.
Death was stalking each of them. Over 150 hellish minutes, they would claw for survival. Some would forge narrow escapes. Some would become heroes. Several wouldn’t live through the night.
Andrews had little choice but to hunker down. He gripped the dozer’s protective foil curtains closed with his left hand to keep the wind from batting them open. With his right hand, he pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth. The heat seared his throat.
This was how most firefighters died, he knew. Not from flames, but their own bodies roasting. Temperatures within the tornado soared to 2,700 degrees, flames blasting into the sky. A nearby Cal Fire truck exploded.
Andrews dialed 911. His singed hands trembled.
A dispatcher answered, on the verge of tears. Dozens of others had phoned in already describing the unfolding hell. Now, here was a call from ground zero.
I don’t know how long I can last,” Andrews told her. “I need to get out of here.”
“If you can, get out safely, OK?”
“I can’t. It’s all on fire around me. Don’t risk anybody’s life for mine.”
SEEING THE MONSTER
Even before the tornado formed, California’s fire season had been unrelenting. The ruinous Wine Country wildfires the previous year began to seem less a singular catastrophe than a foreshadowing.
In 2017, fires had set new state records for size and destruction. Those records would fall again this year as flames threatened Yosemite National Park, torched mansions in Malibu and, in the worst fire in California history, wiped out the Sierra foothills town of Paradise. Ninety-three civilians and six firefighters would die.
The tornado signified with horrifying clarity the reality California faces. As wildfire season intensifies, conflagrations will increasingly defy efforts to control them, becoming more powerful and erratic as they race into communities, striking in ways that once seemed unfathomable.
“As much as I hate to say it, this is what the future of wildfires looks like,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “Except the acceleration hasn’t ended yet.”
But for three days in July, it was the job of Incident Cmdr. Tom Lubas, 48, to try to outmaneuver the Carr Fire as it inched closer to his hometown of Redding, defying the multiagency effort to contain it.
Cal Fire Incident Cmdr. Tom Lubas watched with disbelief as the fire tornado, fed by cool coastal air, grew to massive size July 26, a phenomenon he’d never encountered before.Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
The wildfire had begun in typical fashion — human error colliding with a dry landscape primed to burn. It hadn’t rained in the area since May and winter precipitation had been 50 percent below normal. More than 17 other wildfires were already burning across the state, so resources to fight it were stretched.
On July 23, an older couple, driving home from vacation to tend to a family emergency, cut through Redding. A tire on their trailer went flat, leaving the wheel to drag on pavement near Whiskeytown Lake. Sparks flew into parched grass.
Lubas, a 23-year veteran of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, knew most wildfires did their worst damage in the first hours after ignition, before firefighters dug in. Now, days later, the crews in Shasta County were well past that threshold. Lubas and his colleagues had set up a command center. Called in firefighters from all over. Carved containment lines.
But on Thursday, July 26, the fire exploded from 4,500 acres to more than 30,000, its footprint rippling outward in a rainbow of colors on Lubas’ maps. Just after noon, he had handed off his incident commander role, becoming an operations section chief, and left base camp at the Shasta County fairgrounds in Redding.
It was supposed to be his day off, and he planned to shower and rest. From his truck window, though, he could see coastal winds stoking the blaze and smoke thickening.
He watched as a 30,000-foot-tall convection column — a plume filled with ash, debris and hydrocarbons — ballooned in the sky, condensing into fluffy pyrocumulus clouds. The column acted like the lid on a pot of boiling water. When you took it off, oxygen fed the fire, sucking up the hot air. That’s what the column had done overnight: collapse, then blow flames in every direction, ripping through the county’s rural oak woodland and knotted manzanita.
As Lubas drove, his truck registered the temperature outside: 113 degrees. On the coast, 150 miles west near Eureka, it was 59 degrees. Lubas was worried — and right to be. As the cool coastal air blew over Bully Choop Mountain and into the Sacramento Valley, the 54-degree difference caused warm air to shoot up in a vortex. The convection column would rotate faster and faster, contorting into a cyclone.
Sometime after 5:30 p.m., as Lubas finished grocery shopping, the sky grew dark. The fire’s behavior alarmed him, so he went back to work, driving to the hills northwest of Redding to assist evacuating residents. But more than an hour later, at the intersection of Keswick Dam and Quartz Hill roads near the Lake Keswick Estates neighborhood, he stopped. He was blocked.
Ahead of him, the tornado twisted. It was sinister and snake-like, a swirl of orange that seemed to fill the entire sky. Flames soared 400 feet in the air. It would grow to 1,000 feet wide, the length of three football fields, and produce temperatures double those of a typical wildfire. Its howling obliterated every other sound.
Lubas jumped out of his truck to record a video on his cell phone and was immediately blown onto his back. Goosebumps prickled his arms.
Holy shit, he thought, scrambling back into his truck. Nobody is going to believe this.
‘Get out of there!’
Across the Sacramento River, 5 miles west of Lubas, Don Ray Smith’s radio crackled with the voice of his crew leader.
“Get out of there!”
Smith, 81, had been bulldozing contingency lines into the razorback ridges near the Buckeye Water Treatment Plant. It was treacherous work; dozers can tip and roll on such steep ground. The lines had been abandoned earlier in the day for this reason, but no one had told Smith.
He’d driven nearly four hours from his home in Pollock Pines in El Dorado County to help battle the blaze. Some thought he was too old for the work, but he wasn’t the kind who took to retirement. As a private contractor, he’d operated heavy machinery for Cal Fire for more than a decade and had no plans of stopping.
As day turned to dusk, the tornado began to form. It wouldn’t touch down for another hour, but it was rapidly gaining strength. Its black winds whipped faster, shaking Smith’s bulldozer. It looked like a dust storm, but instead of soil and sand, smoke and embers raced through the air, pelting Smith.
Flames cut off the access road to the treatment plant, trapping him. Two firefighters chased him down the line, trying to reach him from behind, but it was too late. The blaze threatened to burn over him.
There was little else to do but try to create a small safety zone, a ring of bare dirt around his vehicle that he hoped would protect him. Through the smoke, four helicopters dropped water near his last known location. The pilots had to guess — they couldn’t see the ground. It was so hot that one helicopter’s temperature warning light flicked on, and, at 6:08 p.m., it was forced to land.
“I’m cut off by the fire,” Smith said over the radio, in his final dispatch. “I’m pushing down.”
7 p.m.
Escape to Keswick Dam
About 5 miles to the southwest, Patrick Hoffman, 29, steered a fire engine along rural roads to reunite with the rest of the strike team deployed to Redding by the Marin County Fire Department. It was his ninth fire season with the agency, and he was finally learning to supervise an engine.
Capt. Mark Burbank, 43, and two new seasonal firefighters were in the back as Hoffman drove south through the tiny community of Keswick. By then, flames shot across Iron Mountain Road, one of the two main routes through the Gold Rush town.
Marin County Fire Department firefighter Patrick Hoffman (left) and Mark Burbank, a fire captain, took refuge with their team at Keswick Dam and watched as the Carr Fire jumped the Sacramento River. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Hoffman had turned left on Keswick Dam Road, toward the Sacramento River, when everything went dark. The crew plunged into a void of black smoke. They were in the belly of what would become the tornado — but it hadn’t started swirling yet. Embers glowed like stars. The lines on the road below disappeared. Then the gas pedal slackened, the engine robbed of the oxygen that fed the fire’s combustion.
Flames flared ahead, and Hoffman reversed. Flames flared behind, and he accelerated. Back and forth he went, like a player in a high-stakes game of “Frogger.” It was more than 200 degrees inside the engine’s cab, so hot that the mapping system powered down. Painted letters, reading “Point Reyes,” melted off the engine’s side. So did their taillights. If the rig stalled … Hoffman didn’t want to think about it.
In the back seat, Burbank worked the radios. “We are in a bad spot,” he messaged his battalion chief. “We are in a really bad spot.”
.
Firefighters carry personal shelters as a tool of last resort. The Marin crew members knew they needed to deploy theirs now. Ahead, Burbank spotted a gate leading to a small field. He figured they could break out the thin foil blankets — which reflect heat while preserving a pocket of breathable air — and crawl under them, waiting out the storm.
“I’m going to check the gate,” he said, opening the engine door.
Burbank walked 10 feet, maybe less. Radiant heat blasted his face. His protective yellow suit started smoking. His eyes watered.
Even if I make it to this gate, he thought, I won’t make it back alive.
So he retreated to the engine. Hoffman then nosed the vehicle flush against a steep bank, a buffer from wind, flames and flying debris that threatened to shatter the windshield.
“Everyone grab your fire shelters and get ready to hold them against the windows!” Burbank shouted.
He thought of his wife, Yvonne, and their three young children. Firefighters had been dying over the summer; now he was going to be the next. But in that moment, the smoke shifted. Black faded to a caramel brown. A mirage? No, a break.
Hoffman gunned the vehicle down Keswick Dam Road, pausing for two of the men to snap a bolt on a gate, before parking in a gravel lot near the dam’s power plant. The crew of four abandoned the engine and hiked to the edge of the river. It was 113 degrees, but the air outside the suffocating engine felt as crisp as a winter breeze. Burbank re-established radio contact, trying to hide his shaking hands.
“Head’s up, Engine 1564 is taking refuge at Keswick Dam.”
As the Marin firefighters looked north, the flames swirled and converged as the blaze hopped the river. Ahead was Redding, population 90,000. The fire tornado was touching down.
7:15 p.m.
‘I’ll lead you out’
“Issue evacuation orders for the neighborhood of Sunset Terrace,” Shawn Raley barked over the radio to his branch commander, “all the way down to Eureka Way to Shasta High School.”
The sky was red and the wind screamed, shaking the leaves off trees. New fires lit in shrubs and on roofs.
People are going to get trapped, thought the Cal Fire captain, a 24-year veteran of wild-land blazes. They are going to die.
Shawn Raley, a Cal Fire captain, drove his truck into the hills east of Redding and into the path of the fire tornado to help evacuate residents trying to flee. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
He drove to the Land Park and Stanford Hills subdivisions tucked into the wooded hills east of Redding, figuring residents would need help escaping. His headlights barely pierced the smoke, but he could see black clouds whipping across the road. Three bulldozers inched past him on two-lane Buenaventura Boulevard — one driven by Don Andrews, the others by contractors Terry Cummings and Jimmie Jones. They were under some electrical lines, which were swaying in the wind, and he shouted at them to move north, farther away.
Raley’s childhood was forged in fire. His parents worked as U.S. Forest Service firefighters and raised him in Mount Shasta in Siskiyou County. It seemed they were always rushing off in the middle of the night to battle a conflagration. Raley had worked on elite hotshot crews into the worst parts of blazes with little support, and he’d leaped from airplanes and rappelled from helicopters as a Forest Service smokejumper.
Stuff that scared everyone else gave Raley an adrenaline rush. Except snakes. They terrified him. He had seen nearly everything, including swirling eddies of air called fire whirls. But this — he hadn’t seen anything like this.
In the driveway of a sprawling house, Raley spotted an idling Tesla. Dr. Nanda Kumar, 62, had raced 5 miles home from Vibra Hospital of Northern California. His wife Yasoda, 58, and daughter Sushma, 29, were alone. They hadn’t received an evacuation alert, and when the power cut, their garage door wouldn’t open.
Video: As Shawn Raley helped evacuate residents from nearby subdivisions, footage from a camera on his dashboard captured his encounter with the Kumar family.
“Go back!” Raley shouted at Kumar, sounding his siren. “You’re not —”
“My wife and daughter are there, can they come in?” Kumar said, pointing to his vehicle.
“Come in my truck?” Raley asked. “Yes.”
The women, still in their pajamas, climbed into the back seat, coughing. Nearby, flames that climbed 100 feet devoured their neighbors’ homes. Soon, their home would fall as well. Trees bent nearly in half.
“I’ll lead you out,” Raley yelled to Kumar. “Take your car.”
Debris pelted the truck, cracking Raley’s windshield and shattering the others, as the wind blew the vehicle off the road. The captain threw himself across the passenger seat, shielding his face, as the fire passed over them. Yasoda and Sushma screamed.
“Are you OK?” Raley shouted, though he knew the answer.
He couldn’t hear his own voice over the tornado. He was embarrassed. What a weird emotion to feel at this moment, he thought. He’d told this trapped family he would get them out safely. Now they were covered in glass and bleeding. Behind them, the trunk of Kumar’s Tesla was aflame.
Raley never thought he would die on a fire line. But maybe this was it.
Sushma Thiruvoipati (left), her mother, Yasoda Thiruvoipati, and father, Nanda Kumar, were forced to try to outrace the fire tornado after their home lost power and the garage door would not open. The whirling flames passed over them as they fled. Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
7:30 p.m.
The black rectangle
The radio call from Redding fire Inspector Jeremy “J.J.” Stoke couldn’t have been more urgent:
“Mayday!” he said.
Redding fire Inspector Jeremy “J.J.” Stoke, who had left a vacation early to help fight the Carr Fire, was caught in the path of the fire tornado. Photo: Casey Lansdon / Associated Press
The 37-year-old had cut short a family vacation in Oregon and Idaho with his wife and two children to come home and battle the Carr Fire. That night, he’d joined others in evacuating residents from the Land Park neighborhood. As the tornado descended, he was about 250 feet northwest of Raley, driving his truck south on Buenaventura Boulevard. The ferocity of the thing defied his long experience.
“I need a water drop,” Stoke called out at 7:39 p.m. “I’m getting burned over.”
An engine captain responded immediately, asking for his location. There was no response.
The tornado picked up Stoke’s 5,000-pound Ford F-150 truck as if it was a toy car, flipping it repeatedly and dragging it down Buenaventura Boulevard. The truck scraped the pavement, leaving a trail of red paint, before coming to rest in the woods.
The twister destroyed everything around him, buckling an electrical tower into a jumble of steel, lofting a shipping container and blasting the bark off oak trees. Even after Stoke’s truck was towed, a black rectangle remained scorched on the ground. There, his friends and family would build a memorial covered in firefighting badges and Giants baseball caps.
For months, Stoke’s colleagues would search the area for his lost helmet. They never found it.
Scorched earth and melted metal mark the spot where Jeremy Stoke’s truck, tossed by the fire tornado, came to rest near Buenaventura Boulevard in Redding. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
7:30 p.m.
Melody and the kids
Just south, on Quartz Hill Road, 70-year-old Melody Bledsoe soaked blankets in her kitchen sink and draped them over her great-grandchildren, Emily and James “Junior” Roberts, who were 4 and 5 years old.
Melody’s husband, Ed, was a handyman who’d gone just down the road to pick up a paycheck. The family hadn’t been ordered to evacuate, and Ed didn’t know the tornado was headed their way — until he got a desperate, frightened call from Junior while he was stuck in gridlocked traffic.
“Are you coming?” the boy asked, his small voice frantic. The storm was sucking air through the house, rattling the windows, and ripping through the trees outside.
Ed Bledsoe was on the phone to his family on Quartz Hill Road in northwest Redding when he lost contact with his wife, Melody, and great-grandchildren, James Roberts Jr., 5, and Emily Roberts, 4. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
“Don’t worry, Grandpa is coming.”
“You gotta come in the front door, the back door is on fire,” Junior said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“That’s where I’m coming. Be ready. You guys be ready. I’ll be there just as quick as I can. I’m waiting for the fire to pass.”
“Tell Grandpa I love him,” Melody Bledsoe said in the background, her voice barely audible.
“Everybody says they love you,” Junior said. “Come get us, Grandpa. There’s starting to be a lot of fire here.”
Then the call went silent.
7:45 p.m.
A text and a prayer
Three elements make fire: heat, oxygen and fuel.
So as the blaze spotted around bulldozer driver Terry Cummings in an open field near Buenaventura Boulevard, the 44-year-old attacked the wildfire’s base. He would choke off its fuel. Stop the flames from spreading. Two other dozer operators on contract with Cal Fire — Don Andrews and Jimmie Jones — worked alongside him. Raley was their boss.
Terry Cummings was fighting the Carr Fire in Redding when he became trapped in his bulldozer by the tornado. He suffered burns all over his body, including his back, face, right leg and hands. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Fire should have scared Cummings. The contractor grew up in the mountains in a logging and milling family. As a child, he would sit on his father’s lap as he drove their bulldozer through the woods. But in 2005, his mother, sister and brother died in a house fire ignited by a candle, and soon after, he shut down the family business. He’d chased wildfires ever since.
Cummings had the rough look of a firefighter, but his hair was shiny and fell to his mid-back — his one vanity.
Video: From his bulldozer, Terry Cummings recorded a video on his cell phone of the oncoming flames.
“I was in some bad firestorms,” he texted his girlfriend, Shalli, at 8:04 p.m. “I love you.”
The field around him was a sea of rippling orange, the embers and flames seemingly alive. He couldn’t breathe from the smoke. He flagged down Andrews and Jones and led them back to Buenaventura Boulevard. He figured they could wait between the steep banks on either side of the road. The air would be clear, and the dozer engines could cool down.
But as they drove north, the tornado descended again, its edges glowing red. It whipped rocks into Cummings’ windshield like bullets, shattering the glass. It was as dark as midnight. Then it picked up the front of his 25-ton bulldozer, pivoting it clockwise and dropping it on the hood of a nearby truck, which was crushed and aflame.
The driver must be dead, Cummings thought.
He reached for the fire shelter tucked behind his seat, but nabbed his gear bag by accident. He held it in front of his face to protect his airways. White blisters bubbled on his fingertips. His skin felt like it was melting. He screamed in pain.
“No Lord,” he screamed. “Not like this!”
Now, it seemed, he was going to die the way his family had. The tornado sucked Cummings halfway out the shattered window, his body drawn by a gravity he didn’t understand. He gripped the window frame. Jagged glass pierced his left leg as he pulled himself back inside.
Reaching up, he tried to unfold the fire curtains over his dozer’s open windows. But the third-degree burns on his fingers prevented him from undoing the clasps. He grabbed a knife and cut them. Finally reaching his fire shelter, he pulled its cord as best he could.
“Be calm. Don’t make mistakes,” he repeated to himself. “Be calm. Don’t make mistakes.”
For a moment, the wind stopped.
8 p.m.
Into the blade
Minutes later, the tornado raced down Buenaventura Boulevard again.
Even now, much about the storm remains unknown. Several fire tornadoes could have occurred. Or maybe it was one, weakening and then again gathering strength. Those who witnessed it say it appeared to wane several times, only to be recharged.
In a final Cal Fire report, there is no consensus. What scientists know is this: Wind follows the terrain, and, as the twister headed uphill, it slowed. Then it probably fell backward, attacking the same area again.
At that moment, the particulars didn’t matter much to Steve Bustillos, 55, as he cringed in the driver’s seat of his truck — the one that sat mangled and flaming under Terry Cummings’ dozer. The air quivered and warped from the heat, like the horizon of an asphalt highway on a hot day.
Former San Jose police Officer Steve Bustillos, of Redding, saw his truck crushed by a tornado-tossed bulldozer as he attempted to evacuate the Stanford Hills subdivision during the Carr Fire. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
A retired San Jose police officer, Bustillos lived in the Stanford Hills subdivision. He hadn’t evacuated in time because he didn’t know he needed to. The fire had moved that quickly. As he drove out of the gated neighborhood just after 8 p.m., he called his wife, who was receiving treatment in the Bay Area for endometrial and lung cancer, both stage 4.
“It might be over,” he told her. “The fire is here.”
Now he was in grave trouble. The fire spreading in his pickup fed off spilled diesel, torching paperwork, jewelry and guns in the back seat. Bustillos’ hair looked like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. He knew he couldn’t stay put.
So he climbed outside, grabbing a suitcase filled with clothing, and made a desperate move, crouching in the blade of Cummings’ bulldozer, which provided some protection from the wind. He held the luggage in front of him. Fifteen seconds passed, or possibly 15 minutes. He wasn’t sure.
Embers floated through the air as the wind shifted. Fire danced through the grass and in the trees. Then the temperature dropped, perhaps by as much as 50 degrees. Bustillos saw Cummings sprinting down the street under his semi-deployed fire shelter.
“Get me out of here!” Cummings yelled at a man driving a Cal Fire truck, his voice cracking. “I am burned really bad.”
Bustillos hopped into a second truck. Then he saw the driver’s face. He knew that expression from decades in law enforcement — the look when someone wearing a uniform, which meant they were supposed to keep people safe, knew that might not be possible.
“I saw it in them,” he said. “These guys were scared.”
8:15 p.m.
‘Where is Don?’
The tornado had jumped a river, blasted across fields, leveled neighborhoods and rendered the landscape smooth and alien. Now it was dissipating, finally. But as it withdrew back into the sky, few knew that.
Firefighters and police officers and residents, gripped by fear, were rushing to escape what they supposed was an inevitable death. In the chaos, Don Andrews was left behind. Alive — at least for now, he thought.
Again, the dozer operator reached for his cell phone. He called his son.
“Tell my wife I love her,” he said. “Please. Take care of her.”
Down the hill, now near the intersection of Nash and Keswick Dam roads, Cmdr. Lubas watched people stream out of hillside neighborhoods. Their stares were vacant, like those of soldiers returning from battle. They’d survived the worst of a fire that killed eight people — including Don Ray Smith, Jeremy Stoke, Melody Bledsoe and her great-grandchildren — and ruined more than 1,000 homes over 38 days.
“They couldn’t comprehend what was going on,” Lubas said later. “I have been doing this for 23 fire seasons, and I have never seen anything remotely close to that tornado.”
Lubas helped spray down the back of Dr. Kumar’s Tesla, which was still flaming. He directed their savior, Capt. Raley, to set up a triage area for burn victims, and ordered five ambulances. Then he left to continue evacuating more residents along Lake Boulevard. More people flooded the intersection.
Andrews still wasn’t among them.
“Where is Don?” his colleague, Mike Merdock, kept asking. “Why did no one get Don?”
Eventually, Merdock was able to drive up Buenaventura Boulevard, past California Highway Patrol officers who had blocked off the street, and find the bulldozer. He figured Andrews was dead, that he couldn’t possibly have survived. But as he grabbed the back of the contractor’s shirt to haul him out of his vehicle, Andrews twitched.
Don Andrews, a contract bulldozer operator with Cal Fire, hugs his wife Debra at the spot near Buenaventura Boulevard where his bulldozer was overwhelmed by a fire tornado as he fought the Carr Fire in Redding. Photo: Guy Wathen / The Chronicle
Together, they drove out of the decimated neighborhood, Andrews thinking one thought: How did anyone live through this?
All that was left, for as far as he could see, was ash.
Don Andrews, Terry Cummings; Shawn Raley (Cal Fire);
Craig Martin, John Richey, Chris Varnum (Redding Fire Dept.)
A landscape left barren in the aftermath of the Carr Fire tornado serves as a backdrop as survivors share their stories. Media: Guy Wathen, Santiago Mejia
Tom Nogler, long time prior MI board member, Affidavit of support Tom’s Statement
Opium’s (online abattoir) demonizing all white men as ‘white supremacists’ and ‘over privileged white patriarchs’ in support of the manipulative sexist racist drama queen, Shawna Hawk: OPIUM Posts
14 year old Olivia Fellows Challenges Drama Queen’s condescending tone
Hysterical Drama Queen Guts Rick Fellows & Tom & Media Island Using Dana Walker (pic below) as her personal white bogeyman
Jimmy ADMITS he’s a privileged white male patriarch in the above MI audio. The truth be told, he has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty. White male patriarchs are personas non-grata now at Media Island—UNLESS they’re SOOoo privileged and rich Shawna & disciples refuse to notice. It would appear Jimmy is the exception to anti-white male discrimination at MI. Hey, Big Spender!–you’re too cool.
Dana Walker ( Shawna’s bete noire), homeless independent community journalist & publisher of THE THUNDERBOLT weekly online magazine, previously unpaid caretaker of Media Island & programmer of its KOWA radio station
Shawna managed to be elected to Media Island’s Board of Directors by way of a vote of approval by the very (feckless) board members she removed from that same board soon thereafter, i.e. Rick Fellows and Tom, who had invested 32 years of their life into the community based non-profit, w/no pension/retirement, no gold watch, no health care, no nothing!
Shawna removed other progressives as well, among them: Food Not Bombs, an organization dedicated to feeding the poor; Works In Progress, a progressive newspaper; Bruce Wilkerson, a community activist; Dana Walker, an unpaid caretaker, independent homeless community journalist, publisher & KOWA radio programmer; Abby, a black woman and unpaid caretaker prior to Shawna’s arrival, and others whose names escape this journalist for the moment due to sheer numbers.
Shawna Hawk’s ALMA MATER (TESC, College of Indoctrination):
Shawna replaced these activist organizations with her personally selected coterie of TESC indoctrinated sexist racists and bigots who vehemently argue all white men are persona non-grata (except Jimmy, the President of the board who is so wealthy they appear not to notice how white and male HE is!), white supremacists, and privileged patriarchs. i.e. They hate white men, insult and constantly disparage them while routinely discriminating against them. And, frankly, a number of those men that have previously been in the Media Island mix DESERVE it–stupidity has consequences.
Shawna Hawk’s favored neo-male type: James A. Bolling of TESC:
Even the gods cannot protect fools from their folly goes a Greek aphorism. You boneheads KNEW (or should have with even a modicum of due diligence and a background check) SHE WAS A SNAKE WHEN YOU PICKED HER UP! Even Evergreen’s KAOS radio station showed her the way out the door. Her ex-husband’s sworn declarations in their divorce (Pierce County) make life living with her sound like a tale from the crypt. “Those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” -Hosea-
THE current FALSE NARRATIVE (sweeping the dirt under the rug):
From Media Island’s home page:
We live in critical times. No longer can we avoid our responsibilities to each other and to the planet. The opportunity for the evolution of a more inclusive, ecological, and international civil society lies before us. At Media Island International we believe individuals will take these steps when given access to the whole story. Understanding that people’s access to information is limited by corporate ownership and control of most communication outlets, MII is dedicated to provide access to alternative media and first-hand sources of information regionally, nationally, and internationally. MII is committed to collecting, processing, and distributing crucial information addressing the social justice, economic democracy, ecological sustainability and peace issues that we all collectively face. At Media Island’s resource and networking center we provide tools to make individuals voice heard and resources to strengthen that voice. Media Island’s center is host to a variety of meetings, workshops and speakers to help educate and network our communities. People are welcome to stop in browse, socialize, plan, compute, watch a video or just sit down and enjoy a hot beverage. In addition to the books, CDs and videos that are available at the library, we also have zines, magazines, newspapers, a wide variety of information from many campaigns and struggles locally, regionally continentally and worldwide. Many of these materials are available at the Info-shop on the front porch, and are available in our library. Our Issue based research archive is held in numerous filing cabinets and holds materials dredged up over decades of Social Justice, Economic Democracy, Ecological Sustainability, and Peace campaigning. To broaden the distribution of important information, volunteers strive to publish information packets at critical times to provide a more complete picture of current events. Anyone interested in making information accessible should plug in. The library and Infoshop are maintained through the hard work and dedication of members of the Media Island Collective and the community. None of the volunteers are paid and all donations to the library go towards maintaining the space and expanding the collection. Without the support of the community the library would not be possible. If you find this space valuable in any way please help support us. We are working to reestablish public open house hours but currently are available via request and reservation, and very much depends on volunteer energy. Access phone numbers are posted on the front door. Visit the info-porch during open house hours. The Back Story of Media Island Media Island International (MII) was started in 1984 by a group of dedicated activists with a desire to spread under-published information on critical issues ignored by the mainstream media. For many years, MII accomplished this goal by reprinting and distributing articles from alternative publications as well as information and news gained from direct contact with those working on the issues. Understanding that access to information is limited by corporate ownership and control of most communication outlets, MII dedicated itself to distributing alternative media and developing relations with first-hand sources of information locally, nationally and internationally. This deepened our involvement with people working on under-reported and critical environmental, indigenous, peace, and social justice issues such as:
Black Mesa/ Big Mountain: Native Americans challenging forced relocation.
Leonard Peltier: Internationally recognized as U.S. political prisoner.
Lyle Point: native fishing and burial site on Columbia River threatened by development.
Chiapas, Mexico: Mayans suffering militarization and violence call for help from international civil society to achieve autonomy, justice and peace with dignity.
Grass Lake, Allison and McAllister Springs, Rolling Fields, and Long Lake campaigns: Citizen activists working on local pressing environmental, public health and growth management issues. Our volunteer staff aided in developing lawsuits against developers, networking individuals and groups of interest to specific issues, and doing educational campaigns. Our work directly aided drinking water source protection and pesticide education, the preserving of wetlands, and curbing urban sprawl through the creation of public parks. And many others.
Media Island is no longer meaningfully accessible to the vast majority of Olympia’s residents–As a reading of the above linked article and details makes painfully clear.
Please help in circulating the above article I spent days researching and investigating in order to expose the machinations behind the hostile takeover of Media Island. Those responsible, and their acolytes, are engaged in a campaign of censorship to hide the facts of the hostile takeover of Media Island…including the deliberate triggering of FB’s algorithm suppressing the above post-link from being relayed–a link to an article on the Mason County Blog covering the story. Please copy and paste it liberally. This NEEDS to get out there. Dana’s trial/hearing is today in the Thurston County District Court. Rm #3, 2000 Lakeridge Drive, Olympia, WA @ 9:00 PM . (11-30-18) The case is all about trying to shut Dana up (or any other journalist so disposed) from reporting on the intrigue at Media Island along with the blatant racism and sexism currently underway. Those in favor of 1st Amendment principle’s can’t all be shut down, even with the likes of Zuckerberg blocking the way, if we collective take direct action to preserve the 1st Amendment and right to public participation. The above article contains an audio recording the principals tried to keep a secret with a confidentiality ‘agreement’ that was overcome with a subpoena. It reveals the virulent machinations behind closed doors along with other shocking court documents–not the least being the effort to use Washington’s anti-harassment statute (RCW 10.40) as a SLAPP suit (against public participation)–an egregious abuse of process.
Be part of the solution. If we fail to exercise our rights, we WILL lose them, and the leftwing neo-Nazi sexist racist anti-white new order will become the new normal, the new accepted bigotry with the politicization and misappropriation of the commons on their menu.
‘Lisa’ Ganser in Hawk v. Walker courtroom, pal EV Webb in background
_________________________________________________________________ Courtroom Audio files/links at last of 11-30-18 Hawk v. Walker
1st Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Rejecting Hawk’s Claims1st Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Rejecting Hawk’s Claims2nd Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Further Rejecting Hawk2nd Portion of Thurston District Courtroom Audio Further Rejecting HawkListeners should note the judge lecturing Shawna & her acolytes TWICE in the 1st courtroom audio clip. and yet again toward the end of the 2nd beginning with the right to photograph in public spaces/venues, the right to participate in public affairs, the right to report and to publish, the prohibition against prior restraint, Shawna’s failure to state a (lawful) claim, and her abuse of process, i.e. attempting to use an improper forum to shit Dana up and have an injunction issued against him publishing about a hot topic of public interest–the misappropriation of Media Island’s house (donated for PUBLIC use!) by Shawna Hawk, her Greek Chorus, and Jimmy Mateson, the Big Spender.In fact, the judge suspended the normal rules of the court and evidence to allow Shawna as much rope to hang herself (which she did) as she liked. It was her tour de force of incompetence, intersectionality, racism, sexism, bigotry, melodrama, violations of Dana’s civil rights, abuse of process, and a failed attempt to manipulate the court with her standard MO. Even so, Olympia’s Food Co-0p continues to trail in Shawna’s footsteps through this swamp.The entire audio is almost 2 hours long, but well worth listening to if the politicization and misappropriation of the community commons are concerns, or the targeting and victimization of a homeless journalist for having the courage to do his job: To alert the public.
‘Lisa’ Ganser’s Take:
From POOR Magazine, Olympia WA, 11-25-18
Media Island & Shawna Hawk
Shawna Hawk is a Black Power movement builder, a Mother, a Healer and a catalyst for social change. She is creating radical intersectional community in Olympia by transforming a space that has long been a stronghold of white cis male activism – Media Island International – into a space for Women of Color to do healing, activism, art and movement building, and to lift each other up with fierceness and love.
Olympia, which is both the state capitol and a college town, is a small city of approximately 50,000 people, with over 80% of the population identifying as white. Like any white-dominated city, no matter how “liberal” or “progressive” it thinks it is, Olympia is full of unchecked racism. Media Island International (mediaisland.org), founded in 1984, is a house and organization in downtown Olympia that hosts a meeting space, radio station, and library/archives. Their website says that Media Island is “a resource and networking center for culturally diverse people of all ages, groups and movements working for social, racial, economic, and ecological justice, sustainability and peace” (the term “racial” in that statement was only recently added by Shawna). However, despite their intention of being inclusive, their board and other long-term leadership have been almost exclusively middle-aged white straight cis-men, which has kept the energy in the building and their reputation in the community somewhat stagnant. Shawna Hawk is changing all that.
Shawna Hawk & Media Island house donated to and for the Public’s use, KOWA 106.5 fmShawna is a Black Woman who experienced Poverty and spent time in the foster system, and who raised three kids as a single working Mother. When her twin daughters came to Olympia to look into The Evergreen State College’s film program, Shawna followed. She had already met all of her academic goals, but she decided to get another Bachelor’s degree, post-Masters Degree, on top of two AAs and a couple other BAs, as what Shawna calls a re-fresh, a “trajectory change.” She had always been goal-driven by academics in an effort to fuel her career, but had become disillusioned.
“When I saw that my Masters Degree didn’t get me beyond any of the white women that were hoarding all the power and the jobs, with lesser degrees and experience, that’s when my bubble got burst,” Shawna says. “You know, you jump through all the hoops and you see that the privilege is what wins. Not your paper. I had to just be happy with myself and be happy that, ‘Damn, I did that! I raised three kids. I did my job.’ I look back now and I’m like ‘how the hell did I do that?!’”
At Evergreen, Shawna pursued the things that called to her heart and her sense of Justice. She hosted the show Vibrational Rising at KAOS, the community radio station on campus, and was bringing groundbreaking Black artists and academics to speak and perform. At one point, about five years ago, she accompanied a guest hip hop artist to the house where he was staying, which turned out to be Media Island. She went inside and looked around. She saw that Media Island had a radio station and a social justice library. She saw that the space didn’t look very cared for, but the books looked diverse. She saw a poster with young Black girls on it. She became interested.
Not long after this introduction, Shawna was voted in as the KOWA 106.5 FM Station Manager at Media Island. Later, she was voted on to the Board of Directors, where she was the only Woman, the only Person of Color, and the only Black person. Her leadership and involvement at Media Island have blossomed over the past four years, creating the Women of Color in Leadership Movement, hosting monthly POC-only healing spaces, brunches and retreats, offering Men’s Healing Space for addressing toxic masculinity and continuing her radio show Vibrational Rising as Lady Hawk. Shawna’s work and leadership, and even her impact on the physical space of the building, is obvious. She is bringing the organization alive. But this feels threatening to white men who cling to their positions of power and stronghold over the organization. Media Island is in a unique position to actually DO what its mission has been saying for all these years. There is an opportunity to literally dismantle patriarchy and white supremacy in this one microcosm, and to femmifest, rather than manifest, the hand-me-down privilege fest.“The house that is Media Island International was donated by one white man of privilege to another white man of privilege. So that white man got a chance to bring on his team, to do his own thing. No one was dictating to him how he had to do that. He made that decision on his own,” says Shawna Hawk.Shawna says that white people often bring an energy that’s like “Mine!” especially as Shawna becomes more established and transforms the space at Media Island. They see what she’s done, and they want it. White men tend to hide behind self-righteousness, while white Women refuse to take direction from a Black Woman, revealing hatred and jealousy with historic roots.“Me as an African American Woman, our people were being snatched from our homes in Africa, and brought here. Too often times being evicted from places, whether it be violently or sneakily through foreclosures or paperwork. Having our homes stolen, burnt, torched. Being a part of Media Island, and having it be in a house, where a dominant white male owns a piece of property…” Shawna explains.“Often you hear stories about all-Black towns being destroyed by neighboring white communities who were jealous of what had been built. Not because they had so much, but because they worked so hard for it! So you have Black communities with people who know how to build houses because they had to build all the houses when they were in slavery. Then you (whites) get all mad because they (Blacks) had the skills to build their own house, a better house than y’alls, cuz y’all didn’t know how to do it.”White people of Olympia can support Shawna, and the work of Women of Color, by being consistent, by showing up when they say they’re going to, and by following through.“We need the constant support of the majority class,” says Shawna, “and for people to put their walk and their action where their talk is. It seems like there’s some eye-opening thing happening where white folks are realizing that yes, racism exists in Olympia. Cuz for many, the focus was on the environment. You can’t do Environmental Justice without doing Racial Justice! I know not to take beautiful clear skies and crisp drinking water and think that I can be unaware… I’m on my guard no matter where I am. People are gonna be people no matter where you go.”The fact that white people in Olympia and the United States are finally getting the message that RACISM EXISTS is something that Shawna finds hopeful. Shawna sees and feels a sense of urgency for white people to go deep with The Work, to drop that inherent sense of entitlement, and turn over power, unhoard the resources. She loves it when volunteers make themselves available to do projects, like working on the garden, painting, being a part of the change.“Each time a person walks in and says ‘I like the feel of it in here, oh my god you’ve done such a good job’ – that feeds me! We’re repainting it right now and that feeds me, I don’t even have words for it right now. I get excited about things around the house, and I talk to the current founder who’s shared that he’s on his way out, and he’s like ‘I really don’t care.’ I guess I must care too much because I’m working here as many hours as I can, you know?”History keeps repeating itself, and the men who are sad to lose their clubhouse are lashing out at Shawna and her leadership. However, there is an opportunity to interrupt that cycle at Media Island in Olympia, WA. This can serve as an example of Reparations, of transformative racial justice, at this one house, with this one organization and this one Black Woman. The white men at Media Island are not “letting Shawna” do this work, she IS doing it. Shawna is in Leadership and Media Island is moving out of the old regime to make way for new energy, for that of Divine Feminine, as a Trans-inclusive Women and Community space where especially Women of Color and survivors feel safe, and the divine masculine is held in balance with its counterparts. This is part of a bigger transition that the world is going through, and the pushback is growing pains.To fuel her passion, Shawna stays grounded in the African spiritual practices of Ifa, the study of nature, meditation, dance, music, song, drumming and especially Ancestor worship and engagement with her Spirit Guides.“African Americans who came over with the slave trade, we had to keep our practices hidden, we had everything stripped away. So we had to be really creative with our spiritual practice and rituals,” Shawna explains. “Wherever I go they go with me, wherever I go I look for my Ancestors and Spirit Guides in the trees, in the energy of the space.”
Lisa Ganser is a self described white, Disabled, genderqueer artist and activist living in Olympia, WA on stolen Squaxin, Chehalis and Nisqually land. They are a sidewalk chalker, a copwatcher, a Poverty Scholar and the Daughter of a Momma named Sam.
Hawk-v-Walker Hysterectomy UHS 18-254 (11-30-18)
Oympia, WA (11-30-18) — Courtroom audio in this classic case of a Black supremacist attacking a homeless white male journalist’s write to publish without prior restraint begins @ 3:30.
This video is about Hawk-v-Walker UHS 18-254 in Thurston District Court on 11-30-18. It involves Shawna Hawk, drama queen in chief, aided & abetted by Jimmy Mateson, successfully misappropriating donated assets (a downtown Olympia house adjacent to the public library given to MI for PUBLIC use) for their own unjust personal enrichment via a sham 501(c)3 non-profit corporation (Media Island).
This video contains the complete audio of the 11-30-18 trial/hearing on the matter filed by Shawna Hawk in an effort to shut Dana Walker up by attempting to manipulate the court into issuing a prior restraint against Dana’s continued publication of the Thunderbolt magazine wherein he continues to criticize their blatant sexist racism and theft of the commons by politicizing & misappropriating it.
Contemporary Social =ity: #Me2 Witch Hunt Intersectionality Point System
This clip is wonderful. Featuring tap dancing legends Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr. (64 years old), and Harold Nicholas (68 years old) in TAP (1989). Don't tell these old men their legs are gone! <3 <3 <3
Shelton, WA (11-3-18) — Terri Drexlar, FKA Terri Jeffrey, will soon be looking in instead of out as she leaves her post as Mason County Commissioner due to her recent marriage to a local area real estate tycoon. “I never expected to fall in love,” she explained as to why she chose not to run for office again.
Her passing from the public political arena is notable for the following reasons: Her brittle vanity, ignorance, and capacity to hold a grudge. When questioned years ago about her candidacy for one of the highest paying jobs ($75,000 + per diem benefits back then) her answers and subsequent style proved the merit of this characterization.
When asked if she was a protege’ (if not prodigy) of the 35th District State Senator Tim Sheldon, given her having interned for him in Olympia, she acerbically defended her independence. Plumbing her depths qualifying her for such an important position entailing protecting the health and welfare of County residents and their children. In retrospect, this is all the more ironic given the U.S. Supreme Court recent ruling giving children the right to sue the government for destroying their health and future through policies doing little or even exacerbating climate change and global warming. When asked what she knew about the dioxin contamination in Oakland bay and Shelton harbor (the highest in the Salish sea, 903 ppt in the harbor’s sediments) Ms. Jeffry claimed, “Oh. that’s all been cleaned up and taken care of.” She dusted off her credential of having worked in the local shellfish industry as a basis for her grossly inaccurate opinion. When this reporter attempted to enlighten her, she grew testy.
Fiber-One news radio reported Shelton residents may have recently noticed a large floating crane in the water at the Port of Shelton marina. This crane is part of the Washington Department of Ecology’s Shelton Harbor Cleanup project. The project is aimed at cleaning up sediment contamination in Shelton Harbor, including dioxin, excessive wood waste and carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Dept. of Ecology Unit Supervisor Andrews Smith said the crane is pulling out old pilings, and laying down sandy gravel as a cap for contamination. Smith said around 20 people are working on the project. He expects work to continue on the floating crane for the next couple of months.”
Ms. Jeffrey appeared equally ignorant of the fact Mason County is the cancer capital of Washington Sate.
Terri’s disposition didn’t improve after she succeeded in her her race for the office. She ran as a political conservative, but to her credit, reached out to local Democratic activists such as Ms. Staley and Katherine Price, et ux, inviting them to a sit-down at a downtown Shelton restaurant to discus the politics and expectations of local residents.. As a result of this reporter’s independence covering local news in ways (e.g. Fiber-One news radio, the Journal, etc.) will not, he was asked to leave. Ms. Jeffry did nothing to intervene in this effort to blind one of the public’s eyes and ears…so much for transparency in government.
Some years later, behind closed doors, she rejected yours truly’s offer to volunteer to serve on the County’s Board of Equalization. It was revealed Ms. Drexler had a large capacity for holding a grudge since her failings had been reported in this publication previously. “Words have consequences,” I was told. “Some things are worth fighting for,” I replied.
This will be Mrs. Drexler’s legacy and I owe her a debt of gratitude for giving me the unintended opportunity to demonstrate opposition to it. Still, hopefully her replacement will be more informed…and more competent.
Mason County is a “Shellfish Mecca”?!
ason County is a “Shellfish Mecca”?!
Notice how the ‘D’ word isn’t mentioned once in this interview…a word the local mainstream media is loathe to report. Dioxin is bio-accumulative (for all you shellfish gourmands), mutagenic, carcinogenic, immune suppressive, and cognition impairing–the most deadly chemical known to man dangerous in parts per quadrillion…so dangerous that if it can be measured, it’s a huge problem, causing worse birth defects in second generation children than in the first. Yet our local contamination levels are tens of thousands of times (903 ppt) that!
Terri Drexler did absolutely nothin during, or before, her years in office to help remedy or mitigate, or even acknowledge the contamination–or hold those accountable who created it. e.g. Simpson accountable. She remained a shill for the industry throughout her career, both while in politics and out…bought and paid for.
Shelton, WA (10-27-18) –Watching the interview with chief criminal deputy Ryan Spurling whitewashing the sheriff’s office and none of the mainstream media exposing the hard uncomfortable details of the case against deputy Dracobly left little choice but to publish all of the court documents including/especially deputy Dracobly’s journal diary–the most powerful indictment against the deputy in his own words and what most influenced commissioner Jonathan Lack in his rulings against Mr. Dracobly. The 4th estate and the Sheriff’s office are being disingenuous. I have taken the time to read the entire court record involving Dracobly v. Dracobly…many hours and around a thousand pages of evidence, affidavits, briefs, motions, memos.and restraining orders INCLUDING Detective Sgt. (now chief deputy) Dracobly’s very long (over 300 pages) very detailed, very personal embarrassingly intimate journal diary that corroborates virtually all of Ms. Dracobly’s allegations. Jonathan Lack, the court commissioner presiding over the case found Lisa quite credible (as did I after reading the entire record). Commissioner Lack found deputy Dracobly in contempt for openly defying the court’s orders, and ordered Mr. Dracobly to undergo 52 WEEKS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE THERAPY and anger management classes which Mr. Dracobly NEVER COMPLIED WITH. Officer Dracobly’s guns were ordered confiscated, which the Sheriff’s office did, then arranged to store them in a locker until the DV protection order expired at no expense to deputy Dracobly (double standard?)…something no civilian would have been afforded. No mention from the 4th estate that during his court appearances, Deputy Dracobly couldn’t contain his impulses even in open court (something the court records don’t document) slamming the door entering/leaving the courtroom and rushing Lisa in the courtroom in such a threatening manner, the bailiffs had to intervene. Accordingly, I (as a member of the 5th estate) am going to publish ALL of the court records, including the shocking admissions of an emotionally unstable violently obsessed deputy sheriff who continued to have access to and carry firearms after being ordered to surrender them.
Deputy Dracobly was under a doctor’s care (the details in court and diagnosis were sealed) while being prescribed and taking psychotropic drugsWHILE ARMED & ON DUTY, exhibiting extreme narcissism and obsessive behavior focused on Lisa, as well as extreme violent controlling behavior–ALL by deputy Dracobly’s own admission. And yes, the Mason County sheriff’s office DID know about it whether they received a formal complaint or not! Lisa, with good cause, remains terrified of this unstable loose cannon, is in the midst of therapy to overcome her PTSD and was subjected to marital rape. You will be able to read about it and deputy Dracobly’s revealing journal which he vigorously fought to suppress, but ultimately failed to accomplish because he misrepresented its nature (at least in the court’s mind). Initially, the court temporally sealed that journal, but ultimately unsealed it when Mr. Dracobly was unable to corroborate his claims about its nature or produce a letter from his therapist backing up his misrepresentations concerning it. All the documents and more detailed analysis than is shown here will be found here on amicuscuria.com/wordpress as this article is updated.
Mason Co. Candidates Strut their stuff, ignore bad cops & Domestic Violence:
Olympia, WA (10-16-18) — The city teems with homeless encampments like never before, the desolation and despair palpable even at noon in broad daylight. Former Olympia Mayor Buxbaum gloated while shepherding the city’s ordinance criminalizing the homeless for being poor and destitute with nowhere else to go. Buxbaum argued he wanted to create a crisis to force surrounding jurisdictions to the table and help alleviate what he saw as Olympia’s disproportionate financial burden.
All seemed according to plan initially…until the ranks of the homeless kept growing…and growing…and growing… Then a month or so ago, the 9th Circuit ruled, in a case originating in Idaho, it was unconstitutional to cite/arrest the homeless for sleeping on public property when they had no meaningful alternative. Being poor is about lack of choices as much as lack of money. Panic gripped city officials. “Intolerable!” cried city manager Steve Hall. Mayor Buxbaum’s chickens had come home to roost…with interest!
A cursory walk near the Billy Frank jr. building and the Thurston county food bank revealed a powder keg of squalor, filth, and criminal abandonment of any effort toward public hygiene/sanitation. Public bathrooms remain on lockdown during all the wrong hours, the downtown artesian park has been walled off, and the mentally ill shout threats at passing journalists with cameras, The undertone of potential violence is scarcely veiled…the calm in the eye of the gathering storm perniciously deceptive. Downtown Olympia has become a place where only fools or the desperate tarry after dark.
Shelton, WA. (10-4-18) — This is Darin Holland’s response (very poor acoustics) to a question regarding his candidacy for Mason Sheriff, running against incumbent Casey Salisbury for the position. This was recorded Thursday evening at PUD3’s auditorium.
NOTE Darin envisions a larger county jail, at least in part because he believes it would produce additional income for Mason County. Salisbury also wants more jail space, though for different reasons.
Shelton, WA. (10-4-18) — This is incumbent Casey Salisbury’s response (very poor acoustics) to a question regarding his candidacy for Mason Sheriff, running against Darin Holland for the position. This was recorded Thursday evening at PUD3’s auditorium.
NOTE Darin envisions a larger county jail, at least in part because he believes it would produce additional income for Mason County. Salisbury also wants more jail space, though for different reasons.
